May ART – With Selected Works From The Chris Tugwell And Matthys Swanepoel Collections

This curated sale offers a rare opportunity to experience South African art through the discerning eyes of two collectors whose lives were shaped by their enduring relationships with artists and their work.

The first session of the sale is Art Club, highlighting Strauss & Co’s growing commitment to art education and dialogue. Launched in 2023, Art Club creates space for collectors to engage meaningfully with art through conversation. For this iteration, Strauss & Co invited members of its staff to choose an artwork that resonated with them and to share a story of why that is the case. Endearingly titled, “This is my favourite artwork because…”, the session showcases a selection of works accompanied by personal reflections that speak to the emotional and interpretive dimensions of appreciating art. Among the selected works are Elize Vossgätter’s Thick Skinned I (estimate R30,000 – R40,000), Sanell Aggenbach’s Bleak (estimate R15,000 – R20,000), Diane Victor’s Bad Word – Swine (estimate R20,000 – R30,000) and Jackson Hlungwani’s Fish (estimate R20,000 – R30,000).

The sale includes selected works from the private collection of Chris Tugwell (1938–2021), the celebrated South African painter, gallery owner and passionate supporter of the arts. Tugwell was not only known for his paintings—typically lyrical depictions of rural life, seascapes, figural studies and still lifes—but also for the role he played in promoting fellow artists through his eponymous gallery in Pretoria.

The forty-two works presented in this session come from the estate he left behind and reflect a personal and thoughtful curation of works by artists he either championed directly or whose work spoke to his aesthetic sensibility. Among these are a gestural oil painting by celebrated artist Walter Battiss, Monochromatic Frieze (estimate R30,000 – R50,000) and Adriaan Boshoff’s Still Life with Fish (estimate R25,000 – R35,000), a work that exemplifies Boshoff’s rich use of colour. Irmin Henkel’s Still Life with Pomegranates and a Vase of Flowers (estimate R 25,000 – R35,000) is notable for its sensual palette and brushwork, while a delicate work, Drawing of a Hand (estimate R 3,000 – R5,000) by Ephraim Ngatane adds a more contemplative note. The broader collection includes works by a constellation of important South African artists—Errol Boyley, Dino Paravano, Mari Vermeulen-Breedt, Titta Fasciotti, Michael Heyns and Durant Sihlali—marking this as a tribute to Tugwell’s keen eye as well as a survey of late 20th-century and early 21st-century South African artistic practice.

The third session is dedicated to The Collection of Matthys Swanepoel, a lifelong educator whose path into collecting began humbly in 1971 with the acquisition of a work by Belgian painter Frans Claerhout from Matthys Strydom’s gallery. Over the next 55 years, Swanepoel slowly and methodically built a collection of extraordinary depth, often purchasing one artwork per year and paying for each over many months. His patient and passionate approach led him to build up a collection of works by key South African artists —including Gerard Sekoto, Christo Coetzee, Gregoire Boonzaier and Eleanor Esmonde-White. Swanepoel developed unique friendships with many of the artists he collected. A particularly telling moment came in 1991, when he was approached by a young man in Paarl showing him a drawing; the artist was Solomon Siko, and Swanepoel immediately recognised his talent. This led to two successful exhibitions and introductions to other artists, including Selwyn Pekeur and Peter Clarke, both of whom are represented in this collection.

May ART also comprises a selection of rare and important books, including collections on Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, alongside books on Surrealism, Sculpture and 20th-century modernism. These texts offer a historical context for the visual works on display and will appeal to collectors and researchers who consider literature as an important component of the collection journey.

www.straussart.co.za.